"The conceptual thinking and the capabilities required to
address the homeland security challenge are still immature,"
according to a recent Defense Science Board (DSB) study on the
evolving role of the Department of Defense in homeland
security.

Many of the resulting recommendations are dull-edged and
practically useless. Thus: "Upgrades are needed in all areas
of intelligence collection" and "The analytic component of
intelligence needs to be more highly integrated with
collection."

But there are interesting and important nuggets scattered
randomly throughout the report.

The DSB describes a previously unreported March 2003 memorandum
of understanding on information sharing signed by the Director
of Central Intelligence, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
and the Attorney General. Among other things it prescribes
procedures for a rapid-response 24 hour declassification cycle
or "release upon request." (pp. 9-10).

A proposal first presented in Secrecy News for a "security
policy laboratory" (SN, 01/10/03) and briefed to DoD
consultants a year ago was adopted (without attribution) as a
recommendation for "an information-sharing laboratory" that
"is capable of testing evolving policies, tools, and
techniques for information sharing." (p. 13).

The "Defense Science Board 2003 Summer Study on DoD Roles and
Missions in Homeland Security," Volume I, is dated November
2003. It was quietly released last month. A copy is posted
here (128 pages, 5.7 MB PDF file):

The recovery of information that was removed from the web site
of Los Alamos National Laboratory continues with the posting
of all back issues of Los Alamos Science, the lab's esteemed
annual journal, on the Federation of American Scientists web
site.

"In this magazine, we hope to provide a forum for scientists
and engineers at [Los Alamos] to present their work to each
other and to the wider community in a fashion that promotes
understanding," according to the journal's inaugural issue in
1980.

Los Alamos Science has covered a daunting array of current
topics in science and technology in reasonably accessible
form, from nuclear science to supercomputing to "unsolved
problems in the science of life." Its accounts of nuclear
weapons history are themselves considered primary sources in
the field. The special 1987 memorial issue on Stanislaw Ulam
represents science at its most cultured and humane.

The deletion of this material was an error that promotes public
stupidity, not national security.

Los Alamos Science "was taken off the web after 9-11" explained
Joy E. Baker of the journal's editorial staff, as part of a
scrub of the entire Lab web site.

"They plan to bring it back," she said on February 23, "but I
couldn't hazard a guess when."

How about now?

All issues of Los Alamos Science from 1980 through 2002 are now
posted here:

Most of this material was captured by Gregory Walker and Carey
Sublette in their Los Alamos document collection (SN,
02/19/04). The remainder was located, ironically enough, on a
temporary Los Alamos web page, with articles marked
"restricted to LANL." No more.

DISPUTE OVER 1953 "STATE SECRETS" CASE CONTINUES

United States v. Reynolds, the 1953 Supreme Court decision
upholding the "state secrets privilege," was founded on false
affidavits provided by the Air Force, according to surviving
plaintiffs from that case who have filed a new lawsuit
alleging fraud.

In the latest round, the plaintiffs rebut the government's
motion to dismiss their case. See their Memorandum in
Opposition, filed February 24 in the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania, here:

Another "restricted" though widely reported IAEA report on
Iranian nuclear activities has not yet been obtained.

SSCI ANNUAL THREAT BRIEFING

The Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the FBI
and the Director of the DIA presented their annual threat
briefing to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on
February 24. (The State Department, which usually
participates, was absent.)

The testimony was largely devoid of self-criticism or an
appreciation of the loss of credibility suffered by U.S.
intelligence as a result of the failure to locate the
anticipated stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Director Tenet "mistat[ed] the facts" and failed to give
"honest answers" about U.S. intelligence support to UN weapons
inspectors before the war, said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) on
February 23.

"The CIA did not share all of the top suspect WMD sites in Iraq
that Director Tenet said twice publicly before the war that it
had shared with U.N. inspectors," said Sen. Levin. "It is
more evidence of the shaping of intelligence to fit the
administration's policy objectives." See:

In an early assessment of the threat posed by nuclear weapons,
the Federation of American Scientists in 1946 published a
best-selling volume entitled "One World or None." Today, it
has been posted on the FAS web site.

"'One World or None' is an illuminating, powerful, threatening
and hopeful statement which will clarify a lot of confused
thinking about atomic energy," according to one review in the
New York Herald Tribune on March 17, 1946.

Others disagreed. "You cannot intelligently discuss the atomic
bomb except against the background of present political
realities," including the looming threat from the Soviet
Union, according to an ABC News critique, and the authors
displayed "a terrifying unawareness of politics."

"It remains a document of intense cultural interest," wrote
historian Paul Boyer in his book "By the Bomb's Early Light,"
though it is also "a very disjointed affair.... For all their
eloquence, the contributors were much better at evoking the
atomic nightmare than at prescribing remedies."